


A Lunchtime Surprise

by vanillafluffy



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Coincidences, Gen, Long Lost/Secret Relatives, change of heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 14:35:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14138073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanillafluffy/pseuds/vanillafluffy
Summary: I got a prompt suggesting Bucky Barnes, finding long-lost family members. (It was like catnip. It was fun.)





	A Lunchtime Surprise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Brumeier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brumeier/gifts).



“He likes to cook, put him in one of the restaurants or the cafeteria,” Tony says to Maria Hill when JB comes to stay at the Tower. 

“Yes, sir,” she answers grimly, because this the the Winter Soldier they’re talking about; she doesn’t trust him any farther than she can throw him, unless it’s off the damn roof, and she isn’t even sure that would get rid of him permanently.

JB settles into the cafeteria, taking over prep for the fresh fruit table and once that’s set up for the day, he goes in as a busboy, wiping tables and clearing dishes. Andy Jimenez, the kitchen supervisor, sings his praises, and as Maria watches, he makes friends with the cafeteria’s patrons. 

She wants to jump up and down and protest, to holler at the people she’s supposed to be protecting that this guy is _not_ their pal, he’s a cold-blooded killer--but when JB remembers somebody’s food allergies and cautions them about a menu item, when he asks after their sick cat, when he and two or three different tables are simultaneously debating the best deli in town--nobody believes her.

He’s gotten chummy with Mrs. Talliferro, who spends her lunch hour in the cafeteria with her knitting bag, stitching in between bites of a brown-bagged sandwich. JB brings her a mug of tea and they talk while she knits--he usually has some task of his own at hand--today he’s rolling flatware in napkins. 

Maria is observing them, and wondering, not for the first time, what JB finds to talk about with a middle-aged woman. He can’t be pumping her for strategic secrets--Mrs. T. works in Accounting, for heaven’s sake--when the older woman says something that stops JB in his tracks. He responds. She answers. There’s a minute of back and forth, her casually knitting and him anything but casual.

The expression on his face--Maria leaves the folder of discipinary reports on her table and heads over there, because if Mrs. T. has somehow triggered him, somebody needs to be there to contain the mess. Her piece is holstered in the small of her back, under her suit jacket.

“Everything okay here?” she asks.

JB turns his head fractionally in her direction, but his eyes are out of focus. “Tell me again,” he says to Doreen Talliferro.

Doreen looks puzzled, but not particularly alarmed. “My mother knew Captain America when she was growing up. He was a friend of the family.” 

“Your mother,” he repeats. He sounds short of breath. “Betsy.”

“Elizabeth, really. In those days, she was Elizabeth Barnes.”

Maria blinks, because that means JB is Doreen Talliferro’s uncle, which is bizarre, since she’s sixty-ish and he’s mid-thirties to all appearances.

“JB, what’s wrong?” Mrs. T. asks, and Maria realizes that there are tears on his face.

“Did she ever tell you about her brother Jimmy?” he asks, sniffling.

“Jimmy?” Doreen is startled. “Oh sure, all the time. He didn’t make it back from the war, but Mama still talks a blue streak about him. At her age, I think the past is more real to her than right now. She just loves to talk about growing up, and how things used to be.”

“She’s what, going on ninety-four?” JB asks. “You’ve mentioned she has a nurse while you’re at work. How is she, health-wise?”

Doreen Talliferro looks at him with perplexity. “JB, what’s this all about? Why in the world are you so upset about _my mother_?”

“She’s my sister, Betsy,” JB blurts out, and Maria isn’t surprised to see Mrs. T.’s expression of concern. “There were four of us, Olivia and Betsy and Becca and me--I’m Jimmy Barnes--”

He stops dead, a fresh pair of tears streaking down his face when he blinks. As far as Maria knows, this is the first time he’s acknowledged his identity before HYDRA. The fake ID he’s showed her was for a James Buckley, he’s been cheerfully telling everyone to call him JB, but whatever legend he’s been clinging to has crumbled, is crumbling before her eyes.

“James,” she says, and rests a hand lightly on his right shoulder. “It’s all right.”

“I’m a bit confused,” Doreen states, watching them closely. 

JB seems to have lost the ability to speak. He’s buried his face in his hands, and his shoulders are shaking.He takes deep gulping breaths that sound suspiciously like sobs.

“He was taken prisoner,” Maria tells her matter-of-factly. “After his fall from the train, he was recaptured by HYDRA--you probably heard about them after the fall of SHIELD and the information that was released to the public--he spent seventy years as their brainwashed captive.” Somehow, saying it like that brings it home to her. She’s hated him for what he did--to Nick Fury in particular--but seeing her adversary weeping like this makes him human and vulnerable. For the first time, she believes that maybe the things he’s done aren’t really his fault.

“How is that even possible?” Doreen Talliferro is a level-headed woman, and she’s finding this story difficult to comprehend. 

“Cryogenics,” JB says, looking up. His eyes are red and swollen, his nose looks like a tomato and he blows it into one of the napkins he’s been folding. “Cold sleep. They’d thaw me out when they needed me to do their dirty work, sometimes for a few days, a week or two, months maybe, even a couple of years, back in the Eighties, I think. They drugged me, they shocked my brain, again and again--” He takes a couple shuddering breaths, trying to pull himself back together. 

“I forgot who I was,” he tells them, his voice uneven. “All the pain and confusion, waking in strange places, different countries, sometimes I didn’t speak English for years at a time. I couldn’t remember my _self_ ….” He stops, breathing raggedly again, and Maria hurts for him. She wouldn’t have believed that was possible an hour ago.

“That’s who you remind me of!” Doreen sounds triumphant and wears the look of a woman who’s had an epiphany. “It’s been bugging me the whole time I’ve known you--you remind me of my nephew, Frankie.” She nods sagely. “I might have seen it sooner, except he’s got short hair and he shaves once in a while.”

“I shave…once in a while,” JB says with a watery grin.

“Try it a little more often,” Mrs. T. advises. “Frankie works in a bakery on Broadway in the West 70’s.”

“Yeah? I worked in a bakery while I was in high school.”

“His daddy was your sister Becca’s boy. She passed…oh, it was quite a while ago. ‘Ninety-eight or ‘ninety-nine…’ninety-eight, that’s right--it was just before the jackass I was married to decided he wanted a younger model. I remember how much I wanted to talk with her about it. Mama’s a lot of things, but she’s not the ‘Come cry on my shoulder’ type.”

“Betsy? Oh god, no. She was always too much of a scrapper to have any time for tears. Did she ever tell you about the time she broke her arm trying to rescue the cat off the fire escape? The doctor gave her a lollipop because she was so quiet when he set it. Times were hard; he didn’t hand those out too often. You had to be really, really good.”

Mrs. T. chuckles. “She told me she was thinking about her math homework the whole time.”

“Typical. Absolutely typical. Math was her best subject. She got a job at a bookkeeping service, I remember she was doing that when I shipped out--”

Maria drifts quietly back to her paperwork. Nothing to see here, move along…how extraordinary that James is related to someone who works here…she’d be suspicious of the coincidence, but those weren’t crocodile tears--she can’t believe that he’s that good an actor. And Doreen Talliferro, of all people?! If it hadn’t been for a recent payroll snafu, she wouldn’t even know Mrs. T., who has never had a security reprimand of any kind, never lost her badge, nothing to put her on Maria’s radar. All business, she’d taken care of the problem in short order, and from the steely look in her eye, somebody was going to catch hell for allowing it to happen in the first place.

Engrossed in her files and her thoughts, Maria doesn’t look up until a figure blocks the light from the panoramic window. Mrs. T., knitting bag under her arm, looks at her quizzically.

“How much of that was a tall tale?” she wants to know. “I mean, really?”

“I don’t know about the cat and the fire escape,” Maria responds dryly, “but HYDRA and his captivity? One hundred percent true. I know James still has some memory issues,” because prod him though she will, he still swears he has no recollection of Steve Rogers other than the events in DC “but I don’t, and I know enough that I can verify that’s all true.”

“Huh,” says Doreen, turning to go. “I always thought that cryogenics business was a lot of hooey. It’s going to be interesting to hear what Walt Disney has to say when they thaw him out.”

….

**Author's Note:**

> Frankie appears in my story, Family Resemblence. Apparently, Steve never mentioned the meeting to Maria.


End file.
